Next to the Stupid Lion: The Condolences Job
by poestheblackcat
Summary: Eliot is killed during a job, and the rest of the team is left to break the news to his family and try to decipher his will: "Just plant me in the damn garden, next to the 2 old geezers & the stupid lion." Not really a death!fic.
1. Chapter 1

I've fallen off of the writing horse lately and my composition skills seem to have deteriorated, as evidenced by that terrible pun at the beginning of this sentence. Still, here I go, plodding along, blazing a trail in a new territory, i.e. _Leverage/Secondhand Lions_ crossover fic.

How in the world has no one thought of writing such a thing? So many things to cross! Christian Kane! Sword fighting! Grumpy (old) men! And, in the deleted scenes of the film, a sequence about how the two old uncles were rumored to be two bandits from the twenties and thirties who robbed banks in _**Santa Claus outfits**__. _Yeah, that's right. Eliot in "The Ho Ho Ho Job" anyone?

Anyway, I said something about the multitude of crossover opportunities between the show and the movie to VolceVoice, who had a reference to_ Secondhand Lions_ in one of her stories (and another to Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin in the _Nero Wolfe _series, but that's another - wonderful - story), and she told me to go for it. So…here goes!

Summary: Eliot is killed during a job, and the rest of the team is left to break the news to his family and try to decipher his will: "Just plant me in the damn garden, next to the 2 old geezers & the stupid lion." Not really a death!fic.

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**Next to the Stupid Lion: The Condolences Job**

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Never had they thought that it would ever happen. Sure, they'd _feared _that it might (in fact, it was even logical to _know _that it would someday), but that's different from _thinking _that it ever would, or to consider it as a possibility.

Except did happen. The unthinkable, the unfathomable. They'd all had nightmares about it at one point or another, although none of them would ever own up to it. Losing a member of their team was the worst thing they could imagine, now that they were…a family. It had hurt when Sophie and Nate had left them, but they'd muddled through, knowing that their grifter and mastermind were still alive and safe and would eventually make their way back to the small, oddball family.

They had never considered what would happen if they lost one of their group for good.

They'd thought that the man was indestructible, despite all the evidence to the contrary, when he'd come off of a job bleeding and bruised, or even had to spend a day or two at the hospital. To them, he was invincible, simply because he always got back up.

He was…Eliot. Always there, always having their back, always the winner in any fistfight because he was just that _good_.

But one day the job went south, so far down south you could hear the mating calls of Emperor Penguins on your way to the South Pole.

That was the day their world skidded to a halt and went up in an inferno of flames.

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They tried to contact him for a long while, after Eliot's shout for them all to "Get the hell out of here! Nate, get them out!" and the grunts and sounds of flesh smacking flesh had stopped transmitting through his earpiece (he always hated it when they talked to him while he was fighting), but there was nothing. They shouted themselves hoarse, first sure that he was just catching his breath after an easy fight, then worried that he was unconscious and too far gone to be roused by the four scared voices screaming in his ear. Or maybe the com had been knocked from his ear by a blow. That was always a plausible explanation for why Eliot would suddenly go offline.

Nate controlled his panic first; he silenced them and ordered Hardison to "find him." For exactly twenty-seven seconds, the only sound they could hear though the coms was the tapping of nervous fingers on the keyboard.

Then a bang rocked their world, a seismic explosion that made their eardrums flare in pain from the feedback of their mikes. They all simultaneously flinched and clutched at their abused ears, hunching over in pain. Pain from the realization that one of their number was still in the warehouse that had just fireballed into flaming rubble.

After a horror-filled moment, Sophie gave a ragged gasp that sounded more like a sob than anything, "Hardison? Please tell me he wasn't still in there," she begged, "_Please_. He couldn't have been."

The strangled plea went unheard, as did those of the others, clamoring into ears that could not hear through the ringing from the assault, until the earpieces were inserted into the other, less damaged ear, one by one.

"Hardison? Was he in there?" Nate asked urgently.

"Eliot's Batman," Parker said resolutely. "He can take it. He can take anything."

"Parker…" Sophie started, but was interrupted by Hardison's shaking voice.

"I'm sorry, guys. He was still in there. The GPS in his com transmitted his last location as _inside_ that warehouse." The hacker's brain finally caught up to what he had just said. "Oh, Lord, no. No, no, no, no, no. This is not happening. This can _not_ be happening. This is Eliot, man. He had to've…He…I'm gonna check the security tapes again. He's got to be somewhere _not_ there…" He trailed off, his voice replaced by frantic typing.

"Everybody back to the van. Now," Nate eventually said, the slight wobble in his voice detectable only by a careful listener. "We have to get out of here while we still can."

"We can't leave Eliot," Parker exclaimed.

"Parker, van, now."

"But we can't leave him behind. He wouldn't leave us."

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"He's gone, Parker," Sophie said wearily for the fifty-seventh time in the week since the rest of the shaken team had left the warehouse complex behind them, burning like Atlanta during Sherman's March to the Sea.

She'd surprised herself with her reaction to Eliot's death. First of all, she had never before allowed _anyone_ to get as close to her heart as this team had. She had always thought (in the very rare moments that she allowed the dramatic thought to cross her mind at all) that if any one of them died, she would react in one of two ways: with dramatic hysterics, or the complete opposite, with dry-eyed, practical stoicism.

She had never thought that she would simply allow the tears to fall quietly, without trying to attract attention to them, or to hide them; they merely were. It wouldn't have done the hitter justice for her to carry on like Lady Capulet over the slain Tybalt's corpse, nor could she suppress the tears of grief caused by deep maw in her soul such that she had never felt before, or cared to ever feel again. It wasn't as if she was in love with him, but she did care deeply for him, like she cared for Hardison and Parker…but not quite like she loved Nate. She and Nate…they were complicated.

They were family, and with Eliot gone, they were all out of sync, a broken machine that _needed_ that single crucial piece to make it work smoothly again.

"Where?" asked the blonde thief from her seat perched on the arm of Nate's sofa. Her swinging legs thumped rhythmically against the leather side of the couch.

Hardison stopped typing, and turned to squint at her. "What?"

"Where'd he go?" Parker repeated, tilting her head like a little blonde bird.

"It's just a phrase, Parker," Nate answered, staring into his glass of amber liquid. "It means he's dead."

"Oh." Parker pursed her lips, contemplating this new piece of information, a thoughtful expression on her face.

"I'd like to think he's in Heaven, watching over us, protecting us like he always has. Wouldn't that be nice?" said Sophie with a falsely bright smile made all the more painful by red-rimmed eyes.

"Actually," Hardison said, "as much as my Nana says good people go to Heaven - and I really want us all to be the good guys - I wouldn't want him looking over my shoulder while I'm diggin' into his past, know what I mean? Man was _fierce_ about his privacy. I don't wanna do this, Nate," he added, his actions belying his words, as he continued tapping and clicking on his laptop, hiding behind his screen in his own way of coping with the sudden death of his best friend.

"We have to find out if there's anyone we should notify," Nate said morosely, tossing the whiskey back in one fluid movement. This ache in his heart was familiar; he hadn't realized that he had come to see Eliot as sort of a cross between a son and a brother until the dread had torn into his gut at the sound of the explosion through the hitter's com. This feeling of utmost guilt and grief - he was about to deliver it to Eliot's own family, possibly a father and a mother who loved their son the way Nate had loved his. He hoped they loved him, for Eliot's sake. "Keep going."

"Alright," Hardison sighed. "I'm ready."

He set up the briefing, hoping he would be able to keep it businesslike, professional, _impersonal_, like Eliot was just another mark or vic - no, he couldn't think of Eliot as a victim when he had been anything _but_.

"Here we go. I had to go waaaay back, I mean, whew! He's been in the business a long time." He pointed the remote clicker at the six plasma wide-screens on the wall and the team (minus one) settled in. "Okay. Eliot Spencer, also known as Abraham Wheeler, aka Wick Lobo, 'Wolf' or 'High Wolf' - like the man wasn't scary enough all by his lonesome without all the 'wolf' names - Jack Chase, Peter Prentiss - know what? He had a lotta aliases, aiight? And each one's got a scarier rep than the last." He clicked again.

The snapshot of Eliot glowering through his bangs at the photographer (most likely Hardison) transitioned into a much older one of two young boys standing with two ancient men in front of what looked like an old farmhouse. One of the blue-jeaned men had placed a wrinkled, work-hardened hand affectionately on the shoulder of the tousled-haired boy who was obviously Eliot from thirty years ago, and they were all grinning happily at the camera, a stark contrast from the scowl of the previous picture.

Hardison pointed the laser beam on his clicker at the older boy. "Meet Hubbard Coleman, called 'Hub' by friends and family - "

Parker interrupted with a snort. "Hub? No wonder he never told us his real name." She giggled. "It's weird."

Hardison glared at her and started again. "Like I was sayin' _before Parker interrupted,_ this is Hub Coleman, oldest of three, parents Walter and Celia, born in New Braunfels, Texas on December 7, 1974. Look at that goofy smile and those little overalls. Ain't that cute. He was about eleven or twelve here. That's his brother Garth with him, and the two old guys are his uncles or great-uncles or something. These guys. There's all these crazy rumors about them in their day, man."

Hardison would have continued on that line of thought, but Nate cleared his throat, motioning for him to move on, while Parker alternated between giggling and bouncing on the couch, singing, _"Hub-Hub-Hub-bub-bub-a-bub"_ under her breath the whole time. Sophie put a hand on her knee to settle her down.

"I'm just doin' my job, bein' all thorough and stuff," the hacker mumbled as he clicked, and several windows of forms, type-written pages, and school photos popped up on the screens. "Hub's...Eliot's...whatever. His school records. Football, wrestling team, dated all the cheerleaders - and I mean _all_ - coulda gone to his choice of a buncha colleges on sports scholarships but didn't even apply. He decided to join the Army instead for some reason I cannot imagine."

A uniformed and still teenaged Eliot gazed seriously out at the team. "His records from then on are closed, locked, and sealed, but o' course, I'm awesome, so I unsealed, unlocked, and opened them back up so y'all can take a look at 'em if y'all're curious. And there ya go. CIA, Special Forces, Black Ops, Lebanese army, Japanese security, buncha private armies all over the world, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia - you name it, he's done it. I didn't know he freelanced for IYS, too," Hardison said, looking askance at Nate, who shrugged.

"Worked together a few times. Worked against him more."

"Oh." Hardison digested that morsel of information and went on, "And here's when he started working for Moreau."

The team furrowed their brows at the mention of their former nemesis. Parker glared at the pictures on the screen and thumped her heels even harder against Nate's sofa, making a sizeable dent in it.

Another series of official-looking documents and grainy photographs filed onto the screens in rapid succession, too fast for them to register anything aside from the fact that it amounted to a lifetime of violent secrets. "There's a trail of bodies, dead ones, so I ain't gonna dig nomore because the man was scary alive, lot scarier than I thought, and I really don't need him haunting my black ass. But the dead bodies mostly stopped after '02 when he left San Lorenzo."

"_And Moreau,"_ the team silently added. _"Good for him."_

Nate took a small sip from his refilled glass. Some of this, he'd already known, but the rest wasn't too much of a stretch for him to believe. "His family," he said, "Are they still alive?"

"Oh yeah," Hardison replied, tapping a few buttons on his phone, "they're still around. Except for his momma." A black-and-white newspaper quality photograph of a seated blonde woman appeared on the screen, eyes closed and a gentle smile on her lips, caught forever in a moment of serenity, plucking out a song on the guitar in her hands.

"Ooh, she's preeeeettttty," Parker cooed. "Her hair looks so soft! You think he learned how to play from her?"

"Probably," Hardison said. "She was a music teacher. Died 'bout ten years back, cancer. This photo's from her obit. Eliot's daddy Walter still lives in a small town just outside of New Braunfels. He's a cartoon artist."

"A music teacher and a cartoon artist?" Sophie exclaimed. "That's so bloody _normal_. How the hell do you get an _Eliot_ out of _that_ equation?"

"There's those two crazy uncles I was tellin' y'all about, but the rest of the family's just as normal as apple pie. Look." The hacker clicked again. "Garth Coleman is two years younger than Hub, is an accountant, and married Savannah White, a Baptist minister's daughter, in '03 (Eliot was the best man, by the way, look at him, all happy and proud and stuff). They've got two little kids. Eliot's sister Jasmine is a schoolteacher. Second grade. That's her. Man, I wish my teachers were this hot." He paused to gaze in approval at the smiling young woman with long, honey-brown hair standing amidst a group of small children.

"Hardison," Sophie and Nate said together, disapproval evident in their voices. "You're drooling," the grifter added.

"Ooh," Parker squealed, "Eliot's gonna kill you." She grinned. "Maybe he'll let me watch!"

Hardison twitched and gave a quick glance behind him and around the room, as if making sure that the hitter really wasn't there. "Anyway," he said, "Here's Walter Coleman's address and phone number. So how we gonna tell him we got his son killed? We callin' or goin'?"

"_I'm _telling him," Nate said. "You're all staying here," he added firmly.

The immediate exclamations of "But I wanna go, too," "You can't go alone, you simply can't," and "You got another think comin' if you thinkin' o' leavin' us here!" told him exactly what the rest of the team thought of his plan.

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AN: I killed Eliot, oh, yes I did! Evil me.


	2. Chapter 2

Summary: Eliot is killed during a job, and the rest of the team is left to break the news to his family and try to decipher his will: "Just plant me in the damn garden, next to the 2 old geezers & the stupid lion." Not really a death!fic.

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The house was mid-sized, not overly large, but a big enough place in which a man could raise three children in comfort. It was well-maintained, with a sizeable vegetable garden in the front yard behind the white picket fence, and stood on the outskirts of the idyllic Norman Rockwellian town. Children played in the streets, several of them on bicycles. One particularly adventurous boy had followed the van down all the seven blocks of the town's Main Street, whooping all the way, while his friends cheered him on.

Nate wished again that he had been able to convince the others, especially Parker, to stay behind. This sight, this neighborhood, and this house put that poignant look of hurt longing in her eyes that the team (Eliot especially, he thought) tried to keep from surfacing. She might be odd, crazy, and any number of adjectives for "really, really not normal," but she was human, and they were starting to see that she wanted some of the same things out of life that other, less unusual, people did. However, unlike most people, she didn't expect to ever get such simple staples of human life.

Things like the sound of children's innocent laughter drifting out of an open window, with no fear of danger from the outside, although the team all knew it could so easily get inside.

"Is it just me, or is this place sickeningly wholesome?" Hardison asked rhetorically, gazing up at the house. "I can't imagine him livin' here."

They paused on the walk up to the front door and again on the porch, reluctant to be the bearer of such bad tidings. Nate raised his fist to knock on the door, but found that he couldn't.

"Nate?" Sophie said worriedly.

"Yeah," he replied, swallowing heavily, "I can do it. You can go if you - you can't stay. All of you."

"We ain't goin' nowhere," Hardison protested, hands firmly entrenched in his pockets. "Mm-mm."

"I still think he's not dead," said Parker. "Can we go now?"

Nate opened his mouth to tell her she could wait in the van if she wanted, but just then the door opened, and a voice drawled, "Man could grow old waitin' on y'all to knock. It's alright, we don't shoot at people offa the porch anymore."

The team gaped at the man leaning against the doorframe, looking them over with shrewd eyes through wire-rimmed glasses. "Sorry," he smiled wryly, "family joke. Can I help you folks?"

Nate cleared his throat. "Mr. Coleman?"

"Yes?"

"My name is Nate Ford. This is…my team. We're here about your son. We," he swallowed hard, "...used to work with him."

Pale blue eyes, which Eliot must have inherited, pierced into Nate's own, suddenly wary. "My son? Which one?" The man sighed, ran a hand through his sparse hair. "Ah, never mind. I know which. Hub? Or whatever he's been calling himself these days. My oldest."

"My team and I knew him as Eliot Spencer. I'm afraid it's bad news." Nate took a deep breath, held it. He hated this part of the so-called "plan" the worst. The arriving and leaving bits were easy; the delivering of the brief message, however, was pure torture.

Walter Coleman took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. "It always is. You said, 'knew'? Is he...?" He looked straight at Nate, searching, visibly bracing himself.

Nate let go of the breath he was holding. "Yes. He's dead. I'm sorry." And he was, he was sorry for this father who hadn't held his son as he drew his last breath. For all Nate still grieved for Sam, he had at least been there when he'd died. This man hadn't had the chance to say goodbye, or even prepare himself for the news of his child's sudden death.

Eliot's father stood stiffly against the doorframe, jaw clenched tight. His throat worked as he looked at each of the team members in turn, noting their serious expressions. He nodded. "I see. Knew it would happen someday. You'd better come on in, then. The others will want to know, too. Pardon the mess and the ruckus; the grandkids are here."

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Walter led them down a short hallway to the sitting room, from which they found that the sound of children's laughter from earlier had come. A young boy and girl were pointing at the television set placed against the wall and chattering at the woman sitting cross-legged on the comfortable-looking couch with them. The little girl was sitting in the woman's lap, having her curly blonde hair braided by deft hands.

"Nu-uh, Shrek would eat him up, like this," said the boy, making exaggerated munching sounds.

His sister gazed up at him, wide-eyed. "Nuh-_uh_. He wouldn't," she protested with a lisp. "Auntie Jaddy, he wouldn't. Thwek id nithe. I think him 'n Unca Hub would be betht fwiendth."

"Auntie Jaddy" smiled into the pigtail she was tying off. "Hold your head still, Bethy, if you don't want your hair to get all loose again. There. Shrek and Uncle Hub? Well, _I_ think Shrek is just exactly like Uncle Hub. Except your uncle's got more hair. A lot more." She dug her fingers into the little girl's side, eliciting a giggle.

The girl's brother caught sight of Walter and the team and launched himself into the arms of the former. "Grampa! We're watching Shrek and Princess Fiona!"

His grandfather caught the flying missile with practiced ease. "Are you? Aren't you afraid of the scary ogre?"

"No," little Bethy lisped into his knee, having flown to Walter only moments behind her brother. "Thwek's a _nithe_ ogre."

"Well," Walter said, patting both of their heads, "would you two mind watching the movie without Auntie Jazzy? I have to talk to her about something." He met his daughter's eyes over the children's heads, a silent conversation passing between them.

"O-tay!" Bethy chirruped.

Walter bent down to get near the same level as the boy. "Bobby. I need you to watch your sister while the grown-ups are talking, alright? Can you do that? No goin' outside. Just watch the movie, okay?"

Bobby nodded solemnly. "Uh-huh. 'Kay."

"Good boy." Walter ruffled his grandson's hair, straightened arthritically, and sent both of the children back to the couch with a light brush against their backs. "Jazzy. Kitchen?" He jerked his chin towards the hallway.

The young woman followed the group out curiously. "Dad?" she started.

"Jazzy, this here is Nate Ford, and uh - " Walter faltered for the first time since he'd heard the news.

"My associates, Sophie Devereaux, Alec Hardison, and Parker," Nate finished for him, pointing to each of the thieves in turn as he said their names, all of them still slightly disorientated by the sheer surrealness of the Stepford-like _normalcy_ in Eliot's past.

Walter nodded. "And this is my daughter Jasmine, Hub's, I mean, uh, _Eliot's_ sister. Have you seen Garth?" he asked Jasmine.

"Last I saw, he was napping out on the back porch. Plain tuckered out, poor guy. 'Course, it's his own fault," she answered, looking puzzled at the team's presence. "He might've come in."

They filed into the kitchen, where the smell of baking made Parker's stomach growl. The blonde woman wiping dishes at the sink turned around at the group's approach, revealing a very pretty face and a very pregnant belly.

"Vannah, what are you doing on your feet?" Jasmine exclaimed immediately, moving towards her sister-in-law and fussing about her. "You're supposed to be resting. That was the whole idea of you all comin' here to see Dad. To get some rest, and you too, not just that no-good husband of yours."

"I got bored and well, _antsy_. Really, Jazzy, I feel fine," Savannah Coleman protested, even while allowing the younger woman to usher her into a chair at the table. "Cookies are about done, by the way. Could you…?"

"Yeah, yeah, got 'em," Jasmine said, rushing to the oven to pull the hot trays out with quilted pink oven mitts while her father went outside through the back door.

He returned with another man, younger, obviously the happy groom from the photograph Hardison had shown the team in Nate's loft before they'd left for Texas. This time, he looked bewildered, as if he'd just been woken (which he most likely had). He was tall and slender like his father, as much unlike his stocky brother as he could be, with short-cropped hair and a bookish stoop to his shoulders.

By the time the introductions were made again, Jasmine had slid some of the warm chocolate chip cookies onto plates and was distributing them amongst the group, along with a choice of milk, tea, or coffee. "What's goin' on?" she asked.

Her father sighed, taking a sip of the scalding coffee. "Hub."

The young woman's hand stilled and she looked sharply at the visitors. "Bad news?"

Walter snorted wryly. "Isn't it always with your brother?"

"'Course it is," Garth said, rolling his eyes. "'Bad News' is his middle name, whether for us or for the guy at the other end of his fist, I'm not quite sure, but it's always bad news with him."

"Garth," his wife scolded, swatting his hand, "Don't say that. He's your brother and a _fine_ man."

"Should I be jealous?" Garth smirked. "Besides, I can say it _because _he's my brother." Having finished his teasing, he turned to the guests, his expression more sober than formerly. "What happened?"

Nate looked to Walter, waiting to see if he was up to answering the question. The other man had picked up a pen and was doodling on that morning's newspaper with a pensive expression.

"Mr. Ford here says he's dead," Walter finally said in a rough voice.

There was a collective intake of breath around the table, even from those who knew the news already. Savannah, however, gasped audibly, prompting a worried look from her husband. "Babe? Y'alright?" he asked, placing a gentle hand on her rounded stomach.

"Yeah," she said, drawing a ragged breath, one hand on her chest and the other overlapping her husband's. "Just took me by surprise, that's all. He was always so…alive. I can't imagine…" She broke off with a sob. "I'm sorry," she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "Hormones. Make me right crazy."

"You don't have to believe it, _because he's not dead_," Jasmine said, handing Savannah a tissue out of a box encased in a lacy crocheted cover. She glared at Nate, as if instinctively sensing him to be the leader of the group and resenting the lie he'd told her family. In that moment, seeing the light glinting dangerously off of angry blue eyes, he truly believed that this was indeed Eliot's sister. She was as protective of her family as Eliot had been.

"Ha!" Parker crowed happily and clapped. "That's what I said!"

The gloat left a discordant silence, prompting Sophie to try to diffuse the situation by saying, "I'm really very sorry, but I'm afraid that we _can_ confirm his death."

"Where is he then?" Jasmine demanded. "I'm not gonna believe it 'til I see him with my own eyes."

Nate cleared his throat uneasily. "Well, we don't exactly have him." At the Colemans' questioning expressions, he added, "You see, there was a fire. The uh, gas main broke in the offices, and well, he didn't make it out. I'm very sorry."

"I don't believe it," Eliot's sister insisted heatedly. "He's not dead."

Garth crumbled a cookie in his fingers morosely. "Seems a pretty sure thing this time, Jazzy."

Jasmine scowled at him, then at each of the team in turn. "He's not dead. I'd know it if he was." She redirected her glare back to her brother. "What, you want him to be dead, is that it? So you can finally stop worryin' about him? Or envying him? You were always jealous that he got more attention."

Their father cut in before Garth could respond with a stinging retort of his own. "Honey, be reasonable."

"I _am _being reasonable, Daddy." She stood and crossed her arms. "Hub. Is. Not. Dead," she repeated, and stormed out of the room. A moment later, they heard her footsteps pounding up the stairs.

"Lord, twenty-four and she's still a brat," Garth muttered, slumped down in his seat and still decimating his cookie. "Guess we better give up on hoping she'll grow out of it."

Walter sighed, looking old, and said, "Son, don't call your sister names," as if by rote.

At the same time Savannah pushed her chair back to stand. "I'll go talk to her."

Garth shrugged and glanced up at his wife, worry evident on his face. "You sure you can handle her right now?" he asked, eyes flicking to her stomach.

Savannah raised her eyebrows and put her hands to where her waist should have been. "She near worshipped him, you know that. She needs somebody right now. If you go, the two of you'd just end up at each other's throats, just like always," she huffed, and waddled out of the room.

Parker watched the scene, fascinated. "Are families supposed to fight like that?" she asked. "I thought they were supposed to be happy all the time."

Hardison kicked her under the table. "Ix-nay on the appy-hay," he whispered. "We just told 'em Eliot's dead."

"But he's not," Parker stage-whispered back.

Nate cleared his throat, signaling for them to stop making things more awkward than they already were.

Then, visibly pulling himself, together, Walter asked the question Nate had been hoping wouldn't come up. "What was it, really?"

"Excuse me?" he replied, feigning ignorance.

"What was it that my son really died of? How was he killed?" Walter clarified, grief-clouded eyes sharpening, piercing Nate down into his seat.

The mastermind gaped at the retired cartoon artist, wondering if he knew what his son had really done for a living. Retrieval specialist, hitter, con artist, mercenary, hired assassin - the list of unsavory jobs could go on forever.

Walter continued questioning Nate before the latter could think of another half-true story to tell the man. "He didn't try to fly a biplane upside-down through a barn, now, did he?" he asked with a small, tight smile.

Parker snorted at the idea and got a far-off look in her eyes, as if wondering how one might go about doing such an aeronautical trick.

"How did my son die?"

"It was an explosion," Nate started again slowly, choosing his words carefully. "A bomb, though, not a broken gas line. He saved the rest of the team, got us all out, but he…" He trailed off, face crumbling in remembrance of his shock at realizing that the team's protector had gone up in flames along with the warehouse full of bad guys.

"He gave his life to save you?" Walter finished, filling in the blank.

Sophie put a soft hand on the old man's wrinkled one. "Yes. I-I'm very sorry," she said, real sincerity shining in her eyes. "He always gave us so much. Too much."

Everyone flinched when Garth thumped his fist down on the table, rattling the chinaware. He stood. "You get the guys that did it?" he growled, in a sudden display of emotion. "The bastard sonsabitches that killed my brother, are they dead?"

"No," Hardison said, with a devious glint in his eye, "But believe me, they sure wish they were."

Walter studied the young man's face, judging, weighing. "That's good enough for me, then," he finally said quietly.

Garth wasn't so easily satisfied. "They better _never_ come here, then," he said, a glimmer of the barely contained menace that had made Eliot such a danger showing in his eyes, "'Cause I'm gon' kill them if I ever meet 'em."

Nate met his gaze. "They won't be coming here anytime soon. In fact, they won't be going anywhere at all." He let that information sink in, then went on, "If there's anything my team or I can do…He had a lot of money, and I guess it belongs to you now. And the things from his office are in the van. He left something like a will. We found it in a safe in his safe. All it says is, well, here," he said, passing over a scrap of paper. "It's a little cryptic. We couldn't make out what he meant by it."

Walter accepted the wrinkled page torn out of a notebook with a shaking hand. Once he put his glasses back on, he read the message written in Eliot's scrawl:

"_Just plant me in the damn garden, next to the 2 old geezers & the stupid lion. Money goes to whoever deserves it." _

The father's face and shoulders sagged, "Oh, my boy," he whispered, eyes clenched shut, "My boy." The paper crinkled in his hand.

Garth gently pried the scrap out of his father's grip and read the note for himself. He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. "Dad?" he prompted softly. "He's..." He swallowed painfully, the burst out, "Damn stupid will. Just like 'im."

Walter nodded slowly, patting his remaining son's arm, anchoring himself. "Mm-hm. _Just_ like him. Heart in the right place, but a hopeless romantic if I ever saw one."

"Excuse me?" Hardison said. "Romantic? Eliot?"

"He gave me a hair tie once. That's sorta romantic, isn't it?" Parker suggested, trying to help in her own way. "He wasn't using it and my hair got all in his face because of the wind, so he growled like a teddy bear and threw it at me."

"No, Parker," Sophie sighed, "That is _not_ an example of romance."

Parker deflated. "Oh. He makes me whatever food I want whenever I want it. Is that romantic?"

"Parker," Nate reprimanded automatically, making the thief pout and mutter, "But I wanted to know."

Nate paid no attention to the whine and turned to Walter. "I wouldn't describe the man I knew as a romantic. He was actually very logical when on the job, gifted in strategy, although he was given to letting his emotions rule his actions at times. Is that what you meant?"

Walter rubbed his chin. "'Course," he said, "I reckon you never saw that real soft side of him, hm? All that tough skin, no sign of weakness. Ever see 'im around women and children? Animals? He was a gentle as could be with them."

"Women, yes. Many women," Nate smiled, and they all chuckled, albeit some of them more wetly than others, "Our work doesn't put us around children and animals very often, though."

"He likes kids," Parker interjected. "And horses. Yuck. He took really good care of us, too." She noticed the strange looks she was getting, so she added worriedly, "Did I say something wrong again?"

"No, darlin', you're all right," Walter said, slightly amused at the unusual young woman sitting at his table, munching on her nineteenth cookie with relish.

"Well, he's - _was_ great with kids," Garth said, brow furrowing, clearly uneasy at the change in verb tense he'd had to make. "My brother took his duties as an uncle very seriously. My kids adore him, and he spoils 'em silly. Sends 'em little gifts from all over the place. Picked up a puppy for 'em once, God knows where. Oh hell," he broke off running both his hands through his hair, "how'm I gonna tell the kids?"

"You can tell them he's not dead. Because he's Batman."

"You tell them he died a hero," Nate said, ignoring Parker's statement, "That's what he was. He helped a lot of people."

Walter nodded. "Yeah," he gripped Garth's arm desperately with an arthritic hand, "We'll tell 'em he died with his boots on. He'd'a liked that."

Garth took his father's hand in his own, squeezed it. "Damn idiot," he muttered, shaking his head, "Why couldn't he've just settled down like a sane person?"

"You think he's insane? And he calls me crazy," Parker huffed to herself. "Hypocrite."

"He wasn't like us," Walter said slowly. "He was how we all wished we could be, even you, Garth, remember, as a kid? You used to simply devour your Uncle Garth's stories of his adventures with old Uncle Hub. Now your brother, he didn't just listen. He lived 'em."

Parker perked up. "Stories? I like stories."

Walter smiled kindly at her. "Do you, Miss Parker? If you all've got the time, I'd like to tell you something, a story. Might help you understand my son better. I know what a man of mystery he could be at times. Lord knows even I never knew him completely. You see, my black sheep took after my two old devil-may-care great-uncles…"

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	3. Chapter 3

Summary: Eliot is killed during a job, and the rest of the team is left to break the news to his family and try to decipher his will: "Just plant me in the damn garden, next to the 2 old geezers & the stupid lion." Not really a death!fic.

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It was a long story, but the team listened, enraptured by the romantic tale of adventure and heroism. It made Sophie muse to herself what a fantastically epic movie it would make. Hardison wondered if Eliot knew how to use a sword as well as this Uncle Hub McCann guy, and Nate smiled when he recognized "the man with the spirit of twenty men" in his friend.

Parker, unable as usual to stay still for long, wandered off to examine the fancy china and silverware in the rosewood cabinet. The framed photographs on the grand piano in the next room caught her eye.

"Why is Eliot wearing a costume? Is it for a heist?" she asked, returning to the kitchen holding two frames. "Funny mustache."

Walter took the interruption without the least sign of annoyance (whereas Eliot would have at least growled a little to keep up appearances). He held out a hand so he could see which photographs the little thief had brought to him. He broke out with a short laugh when he saw them. "Oh, no. That's Uncle Hub. They do look alike, don't they? I think he was oh, about thirty here, so probably during or shortly after the war. First World War, that is. That's a French Legionnaire officer's uniform."

"Ohhhh," Parker said, and snatched the frame back, inciting a brief squabble with Hardison, who wanted to look at it, too. ("Aw, come on, girl. Lemme see!") "What about that one?"

"This." Walter got a dreamy look in his eyes as he looked at the faded photograph. "This is Jasmine. Hub's wife. Beautiful, isn't she?"

Parker made a face. "Eliot's married to his sister? Ew."

Garth snorted. "Lord, no." He cackled, albeit slightly hysterically. "We're all three of us named after family."

"Well, that's sweet," Sophie said. "It's quite a coincidence that Hub ended up being just like his namesake. He sounds like he was a real character."

"Mmm," Walter agreed, taking a sip from his mug. "That he was."

The silence that fell then was broken by Savannah walking into the room. She raised her eyebrows at the stillness, but didn't mention it. "Jazzy's cried herself catatonic and the kids are napping," she said, lowering her swollen body into her chair with a groan. "Thank God for small mercies."

"How is she?" Garth asked quietly.

Savannah sighed and rubbed her belly. "She's still hopin' he'll come back, like last time, and the time before that. I didn't have the heart to try to convince her otherwise."

"'Like last time?'" Nate echoed.

"Believe it or not, this isn't the first time someone's come callin' saying he's dead," Walter said, shaking his head. "We've still got his flag from his military funeral folded up in a box somewhere in the attic. Must've been, oh, what, he was nineteen, so eighteen years ago. Gave us a real scare when he knocked on our front door two months later and said, 'Hey Dad, Momma. I'm home.' That boy." He shook his head again at the memory.

"Ha!" Parker exclaimed. "See? He can't die."

The rest of them really didn't have an answer to that.

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They held the funeral on the old McCann property, a few miles out from the nearest town. It was mostly farmland, dried up and useless, and had been in the family for seven generations. Standing in the middle of it was an old farmhouse, painted white and gray with green accents. The attic was outlined in blue and red.

"Well, isn't this rustic," Sophie said, futilely trying to keep the dust from getting on her Alexander McQueen shoes.

Nate grunted. Now, this was more like what he'd expected of Eliot. Possibly with a horse or five and crops growing in the fields, but this private farm setting definitely screamed, _"Eliot."_

The Colemans had arrived before the team, as had about two dozen other people. Garth and three other men had gone into the barn with a pick-up truck to do something, and Savannah and Jasmine were setting up tables of food with the help of some of the others.

Parker stared out towards the west side of the property. "There's a lake over there," she said.

"Good catfish shootin' in it," Walter said from behind her.

"Shooting?" Hardison squeaked. "I thought you caught fish, like, with sticks and string and stuff."

"Well, we tried that, but didn't have much patience for it," the old man said, smiling fondly at childhood memories. "We just ended up shooting at 'em. Caught a lot more that way. Lead pellets were a mite dangerous, though, if you swallowed one."

He was about to say something further, but a whoop from the direction of the barn stopped him. The truck drove out of the wooden building and went around to the patch of dried grass where two crosses and a wooden marker were already planted.

Parker had clapped delightedly when she'd seen it. "In the garden, next to the two old geezers and the stupid lion!" she'd cried. "Look!"

Sophie whispered to Nate, "What are they going to bury? There wasn't anything left."

Nate shrugged and watched the men unload the heavy slab of stone they'd hauled from the barn. Upon close examination, it had "HUBBARD COLEMAN" engraved into it, along with _"Beloved Brother and Son"_ and the day he was born, but a small brass plate with "September 11, 2001" had been screwed into it where the date of death should have been.

Hardison's eyebrows raised at that. "He was involved with 9/11? Damn. Wonder which side."

Having settled the granite headstone into place, Garth took out a screwdriver out of his pocket and began taking the screws in the brass plate out. Walter handed him another flat piece of metal, which the younger man screwed onto the stone. When they stepped back, they could see that the date had been changed to that of the explosion.

"Man's fake-died so many times he's got replaceable DOD plates?" Hardison sputtered, "What the hell?"

"Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," Nate said, not sure whether to be amused or slightly weirded out.

Sophie looked a little upset that she wasn't the only one of the group to have had multiple funerals. She did, however, have a very nice eulogy prepared to repay Eliot for the lovely one he'd given at her funeral.

"Hey look," Parker said, still looking at the lake. She pointed up. "It's a helicopter."

It was. Walter went to meet it, and a dark-haired man stepped out. He was well dressed (his tie alone must have cost a small fortune) and well-mannered - he politely held his hand out to Walter to shake his.

"Mr. Coleman?" he said, a slight foreign accent evident in his speech. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you again, although it is unfortunate that it is at such a distressing time. We have met once before, you see, when I was a mere child, at a time much like this." Walter's expression of confusion dissolved into understanding. "Your son's path and mine crossed again when we were barely adults," the Sheik's great-grandson said, "and we recognized our ancestors' history together only through chance. My name is Mahmoud al-Jabbar, but your son always insisted on calling me Moody when we met. Of course," he continued, with a not-quite-hidden look of mischief, "I always referred to him as 'the crazy American.' He was a good friend, and a great ally, and I was very much saddened when I heard of his death."

"Well Moody," Walter said, clapping a hand on the Arab's shoulder to lead him to the garden plot, "it's a pleasure to finally meet you, too. I've heard a lot about you from Hub."

"All good, I hope," Moody said with a smile.

"Oh sure," Walter replied. "All good."

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Once everything had been set up to meet the exacting standards of the fussing church ladies, everyone gathered around the dried-up garden to hear Savannah's father, the minister, speak about his daughter's adventuresome brother-in-law.

It was a most unusual funeral, Sophie thought, looking around. The people gathered at her friend's funeral were not as sad as one should be at a funeral, but rather shared stories on how the man had helped them, whether with long-term no-interest loans (he would have given them the money, but Texas men are too proud to take charity and the hitter knew it) or fixing things around a childless widow's house.

Conversely, there were also stories about how the Coleman brothers, along with some of the neighborhood boys, had been wayward hooligans in their youth, with the older boy as the ringleader of the group. Parker chipped in with stories of jumping out of second-story windows and guyliner. It was a little like John McRory's wake, Sophie decided, in that grief was not the only sentiment expressed, but also memories of better times.

Eliot's sister stood stubbornly to the side of the group, arms wrapped tight around her body. Garth walked over to her and put his arms around her. Jasmine leaned into his embrace. They stood there until the backfire of the old beat-up truck putt-putt-putting down the road startled them apart.

The dusty, once-red truck stuttered to a stop, and a man toppled out of the driver's side. A puff of dust blew up where he fell. He didn't move.

The chattering of the guests quieted at the man's sudden and unusual arrival. Jasmine jerked out of her brother's grip, crying, "Hub!" as she ran to the fallen man.

Nate and Sophie looked at each other, surprised hope shining in their expressions. Parker sprinted after Jasmine, and Hardison stood with his mouth hanging open in shock, speechless for once in his life.

After the two women had rushed to the truck and its driver, the rest of the crowd realized what miracle had happened and hurried after them to see for certain, murmuring excitedly.

Jasmine had hauled the unconscious man half up onto her lap, uncaring that she was getting dusty streaks on her black dress. She stroked the too-long hair out of his face, saying tearfully, "I knew it, I knew you weren't dead. I told 'em."

Parker was kneeling beside them, and had put out a finger to poke him, when a hand suddenly rose off of the ground and grabbed her wrist. "No poking, Parker," Eliot rasped, making them all sigh in relief.

"That's creepy," Parker said, blinking down at the hitter, whose eyes were still squeezed shut against the bright sunlight.

Garth crouched down and felt his brother's pulse. "What?"

"How he knew I was going to poke him without opening his eyes," Parker replied.

Hardison rolled his own eyes. "That's because you always poke him when he's hurt."

Eliot frowned and finally forced his eyes open to slits. "I miss my funeral?" he asked breathily.

Jasmine snorted. "Nope, you Tom Sawyered it this time. You got something to say for yourself?"

Eliot let his eyelids slide back closed and smirked tiredly. "I got damn good timin'," he said, grunting when Garth touched an especially sore spot whilst checking him over.

"Eliot stole his own funeral," Parker whispered happily.

Jasmine smacked her injured brother's shoulder as gently as she could, so that it was more of a caress than a clout. "You jerk. You had us all thinking you were dead. Again."

"Thought you said you knew I wasn't dead," he pointed out.

Walter shushed his sputtering daughter and slipped an arm under his older son's back. "Come on, son. We better get you into the house. Jimmy, call a doctor, willya?" he said to a man standing nearby.

"No doctor," Eliot growled, getting to his feet with his father and brother's help. "'M fine."

"Sure you are, ya stubborn idiot," Garth grunted, taking the brunt of the weight. "Let's go inside, cowboy."

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They got Eliot settled on the ancient couch in the downstairs sitting room, not wanting to make him climb the narrow stairs to the second story with his broken ribs. Savannah shuffled the funeral guests outside so that the family could have privacy whilst tending to their prodigal son.

Walter sat down next to the hitter and used a pocketknife to cut open the ripped blood- and sweat-stained t-shirt to see what injuries his son had sustained. Eliot lay still, watching his father's face with serious eyes, not making a sound as the older man tsked at the fresh wounds and overlapping older scars on the tanned torso. "What've you been doin' to yourself, boy? Givin' me gray hairs."

The team watched the scene, fascinated. They had never seen Eliot so docile, at least not without being drugged by heavy-duty painkillers.

"Excuse me," Jasmine said from behind them, and bustled through with an ice-cold bottle of water, fresh out of the icebox they'd brought with them. "Here, drink this, dummyhead. You're dehydrated." She began wiping at his forehead with a wet washcloth as Eliot drank the proffered water, but he swatted her hand away with an annoyed growl.

"Don't need that," he said. "I'm trying to drink, here."

"We have to get your body temperature down," she argued, holding her brother's wrist down with one hand and swabbing at his face with the other. Eliot used his free arm (still holding the half-full bottle of water) to move the washcloth away from his face and slid his other hand out from under his sister's, making Jasmine exclaim in exasperation, "Hub, quit it!"

"You quit it," he groused. "I'm thirsty and you're bugging me."

"Then drink your water," Jasmine said, and moved the washcloth down to wipe at his chest, making him jolt at the sudden wetness.

"Daaaaad, make her stop!" Eliot bellowed, glaring at her. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he froze, realizing what he'd just done.

Sophie covered her mouth with her hand, not quite hiding her laugh. "Oh, my Lord. I can't believe you really just said that."

"How old are you, bro?," Garth grinned from the corner of the room, where he'd been talking to Moody al-Jabbar. "Hit your head a little bit too hard?"

"I'll bet that hospital looks quite appealing right now," the Sheik's great-grandson said with an amused smile. "The helicopter is right outside if you would like to go."

Eliot glared at everyone in his vicinity. "Yeah," he said, "Take me to the hospital. Now would be nice," he repeated, when no one made a move to help him up. Still seeing the disbelieving looks on his family and friends' faces, he muttered something in a foreign language and tried to sit up on his own.

Nate chuckled and grabbed Eliot's arm. "It's nice to see that what sense of humor you do have seems to be intact, unlike your dignity."

"What did he say?" Walter asked, taking his son's other arm.

"'What are you waiting for? Am I speaking Romanian or something?'" Nate replied, "In Romanian."

"Where did you learn to speak Romanian?" Jasmine asked her brother, curious.

"In Romania, where d'you think?" he retorted, still annoyed at the cause of his childish outburst.

"If you're going to St. Mary's," Savannah said from the doorway, "can I hitch a ride?"

"I don't need a babysitter, Vannah," Eliot grumbled. "I'll behave."

"World doesn't revolve around you, sweetheart," she said, holding her stomach, "Baby's comin' and I don't much fancy the bumpy ride in the car."

Garth leapt into action, steering his wife carefully outside. "It's not time for another two weeks," he stammered. "You sure?"

"I've had two kids, 'course I'm sure," she replied calmly. "This one's just impatient."

Eliot, Savannah, Garth, and Walter got into Moody's helicopter and flew off with a whirling cloud of dust in the direction of the hospital.

"Well, I'll say this for him," Jasmine said over the din of the propeller blades, "Life sure ain't boring when he's around." She took held her hands out to her niece and nephew to latch onto. "Come on, kids. Let's go to the hospital the long way around and see if we can get there in time to hear your uncle growl like a lion at all the doctors."

"Like Thwek?" Bethy queried.

"Mm-hm," their mischievous aunt replied. "Just like Shrek."

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AN: Looks like I didn't kill Eliot off after all. Are you all happy that I didn't?

And I simply had to have Parker point out Young Hub's silly porno 'stache in the movie. Poor Eliot. I sure do love to humiliate him, don't I?

Also, there's a backstory to Eliot meeting the Sheik's great-grandson. I'll probably write it later, after I finish this.


	4. Chapter 4

Summary: Eliot is killed during a job, and the rest of the team is left to break the news to his family and try to decipher his will: "Just plant me in the damn garden, next to the 2 old geezers & the stupid lion." Not really a death!fic.

Last chapter!

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"It's a boy," Garth announced, bounding into his brother's hospital room wearing a proud grin on the following day.

Eliot, looking much healthier and rested, raised his fist to his brother with a wide grin of his own. "That's great. Ten fingers, ten toes?"

Garth knocked his own fist against the scarred knuckles and accepted further congratulations from his brother's teammates, who filed out to give them privacy (although Parker eyed the air vent with a speculative look). "Yeah, he's healthy, even though he is a little early. He came out squalling like anythin'. Vannah's exhausted. So'm I, for that matter," he said, collapsing into the vacated chair by the bedside.

Eliot laughed, and then winced, holding his ribs. "Jazzy came in here earlier and accused me of spending too much time with your wife. Says she's added a few more swear words to her vocabulary since the last time she had a baby."

Garth made a face. "At least she made sure her dad was out of the room before she let loose. Old preacher'd probably have a heart attack if he heard his baby girl sayin' those words." He laughed, then arranged his face in a sober expression. "By the way, _have_ you been spending too much time with my wife?" he asked solemnly.

Eliot scoffed. "Your manhood is safe. I don't go after married women. And about the swearing thing, you know I don't cuss around her and the kids. Jazzy's fair game, though," he grinned. "Maybe she taught Vannah those words."

They chuckled together in easy camaraderie. "How you feelin'?" Garth asked.

"Better. Be on my feet by tomorrow," Eliot replied. "I'm only stayin' in bed to keep Jaz and Dad happy."

"That so?" Garth looked disapprovingly at his brother's red, green, and purple-spotted face and raised his eyebrows. "Then why're you breathin' like an eighty-year-old asthmatic?"

"Shuddup."

"So how'd you get out of that place?" Garth said, changing the subject. "I mean, you're here, you're whole, mostly, anyway. Not dead. How'd you survive a bomb?"

Eliot lifted a shoulder. "I wasn't really in there. The com - the earpiece I was wearin' to communicate with the team," he clarified at Garth's look of confusion, "fell out during the fight, and I got knocked out, too, for a minute. My guess is, the bad guys - there were seven of 'em, two left by the time someone hit me over the head with a sledgehammer or somethin' - dragged me out, put me in a car to take me to some other place where they could interrogate me in peace, and blew the damn warehouse up to get rid of the rest of the evidence."

"How'd you get away from those guys?" Garth questioned. He found that he was as engrossed in his brother's story as he had been by those told by his namesake when he was a child.

"Faked that I was worse off than I really was, and snuck out when they let their guards down. Took a few days, though. I think," Eliot mused, remembering the very real disorientation that too little food, too little water, and too much pain had caused. "I went to the offices, soon as I could make it, but the team wasn't there. I saw the files they had on me, and knew they'd come here. So I came."

"Why didn't you just call? Woulda saved a lot of trouble. We had a new date of death engraved for you, ya know?" Garth joked.

Eliot grinned. "Heh, yeah, I heard about that from Hardison already. Why didn't I call?" He looked a little embarrassed. "I, well, I wasn't thinking too clearly, head got banged up a few times on the way out -"

"Concussion?"

Eliot nodded. "Yeah, so I couldn't remember any numbers. I tried muscle memory dialing, but I uh, it didn't work?" He flushed pink, prompting his brother to ask what number it had been. Garth couldn't help asking, he really couldn't.

"It was a 900 number," Eliot mumbled. And Garth couldn't help laughing, he really couldn't.

"Shuddup!" Eliot reached over as far as he could without jarring his ribs and punched his laughing brother's knee.

Garth sobered quickly. "Dude, ow!" he cried out, much louder than the pulled blow warranted. "That hurt."

"Baby," Eliot said, satisfied.

Garth glared at him. Eliot glared back. After two full minutes of staring, Garth twitched and Eliot smiled smugly.

"How'd you get here if you didn't remember how to?" Garth asked, trying to cover up his defeat in the childish game he always seemed to revert to playing whenever he was with his brother.

Eliot smirked, knowing exactly what he was trying to do. "I did know where home was, so I came," he said. "Simple as that. I think I stole a truck to get here. Don't really remember. I remember drivin', but not actually getting into the truck." He frowned. "Gotta tell Hardison to check out the VIN so I can take it back."

Garth stared at his bigger-than-life brother. "You are one crazy sonofabitch, you know that?" he said, making his brother laugh and groan right after.

Leaning in, Garth put a hand on Eliot's shoulder. "You just keep comin' home, alright?" he said quietly, his head close to his brother's wild-maned one. "We'll be here."

Eliot put his hand over Garth's and squeezed. "I know. And I will," he whispered.

The meaningful moment over, they patted each other's backs manfully, and drew apart, clearing their throats and looking away.

Jasmine walked in at that point, Nate, Sophie and Hardison trailing behind her. The hacker was holding a brown paper bag, which he set on the bedside table at Jasmine's instructions. "Thank you, Alec," she said, beaming at him.

"'Alec'?" Eliot repeated, staring a hole through Hardison's head. "Stay away from my baby sister."

Jasmine rolled her eyes. "Overprotective much?"

"Ooh, I told you he's gonna kill you," said a voice from the ceiling.

"Parker, get down from there," Nate said to the thief hidden in the air vent. Parker acquiesced with a slight clatter and a pout.

"You tell him yet?" Jasmine asked Garth while pulling out a small Tupperware container out of the paper sack.

"No."

"Well, why not?" She turned around and pointed a plastic spoon at him. "If you wanna avoid the tearful man-hug, now's your chance. He's injured and can't get out of bed."

"What tearful man-hug?" Eliot said suspiciously. "You talkin' about me?"

Jasmine took the lid off of the plastic bowl and handed the steaming container to her convalescent brother. "Here, drink it while it's still hot. It's chicken noodle, and there's salad and fruit later if you're good. And none of it looks like body parts, so you're safe."

Eliot obediently accepted the bowl and spoon, but glared at his sister. "I hate you," he growled.

"Likewise." She planted a kiss on the top of his head. "Eat up."

"Food that looks like body parts?" Sophie asked, puzzled.

"Yeah," Garth said, equally confused. "Do I want to know?"

The oldest and youngest Coleman siblings shared a look. "No," they said together. Meeting each other's eyes again, they shrugged and returned to what they were doing - Eliot to eating his soup and Jasmine to pulling the rest of the food out and setting them neatly on the table.

"Creeeeeepyyyyy," Parker sing-songed in an eerie voice.

"So what'd you want to tell me?" Eliot asked Garth after a while.

"Uh," the younger brother started, "well, uh, we uh…"

Jasmine said it for him, clearly exasperated. "Just spit it out, Garth. Jeez. He went and named the kid after you, Hub."

Eliot froze, spoon halfway to his lips, giving Parker the opportunity to slip it out of his slackened grip with a maniacal grin. "You named the poor kid Hubbard? The hell were you thinkin'? You know how many kids are gonna be callin' him 'Hubbard Cupboard'? Name's a damn bully magnet."

"Eliot," Garth said shifting under his brother's angry stare. "We named him Eliot."

"Oh." The first Eliot gaped at him. "What happened to not naming your kids after family members with a history of breaking their momma's heart?" he demanded.

"As much as I hate to point it out, Garth turned out just fine," Jasmine said, handing him another plastic spoon to replace the one Parker had taken. He stared at it, blinked, and glared at the thief, who was stirring the soil in the potted plant on the windowsill with the stolen spoon and humming. "Besides, it's not like names are hereditary. They're more like heirlooms. If little Eliot's gonna turn out to be Captain Adventure, then he'll go and be it, whatever Garth and Vannah name him."

"Well I know that," Eliot mumbled, shifting uncomfortably under the gazes of the smiling faces around him. "I just…Why me?" he asked.

Garth snorted. "I wasn't gonna name my boy 'Jasmine' so that left just you."

"You coulda named him after Dad, or Vannah's dad, if you're so set on namin' him after one of us," Eliot grumbled.

"My son's name is Eliot, and nothing you can say will make me change my mind," Garth said, crossing his arms. "Just you try."

"Aw, man, just give 'im that tearful man-hug the pretty lady was talkin' about," Hardison said, breaking the strained silence. He shot a wide grin at Jasmine, who smiled at him.

"Hardison," Eliot growled. "I don't hug."

"Sure you do," Garth said, opening his arms to his brother. "Come here, big guy, show me some love."

"Get offa me." Eliot shoved the laughing Garth off of the bed.

"Boys." Jasmine shook her head and replaced the empty soup bowl with the salad and a fork.

"Boys," Sophie and Parker said, nodding in agreement.

Only Nate saw the shy secret smile Eliot sent his brother later, when he thought no one else was looking. _"Boys,"_ the mastermind thought. _"Boys."_

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AN: So…what did you think? There's an explanation for the "food that looks like body parts" and the "breaking his momma's heart" parts, if you're interested. I was going to write flashbacks about them, but couldn't fit them in right. So yeah…The end, for now.

EDIT 8/20/2011: A new story in this verse has been uploaded in the general _Leverage_ section. It's called "Things Worth Believing In."

EDIT 9/25/2012: This story has been nominated for the Fulcrum Awards at Leverage Fan Media dot com. Thank you!

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Review reply to Jenna (no account?):

Thank you so much for reviewing - twice! So I made you laugh in the library, did I? Oops, my bad. (Not really.) I tried extra hard to get the characters right - I'm still new to this fandom, so it's still a little difficult to try to make the dialogue as if those characters are actually saying them. Eliot was hard to try to figure out since he's so mysterious. I think I might have ended a bit OOC (as someone pointed out) with him. But then he's concussed, so, yeah, that's my excuse.

Hub was totally like an 20th century Eliot. I couldn't help pausing the movie and jotting down some notes because the similarities were so _there_.

"I can really see Eliot turning into Hub when he´s older and forced to settle down, sitting on a porch with Hardison, talking bout the good old times" - LOL! Someone needs to write that fic. Eliot would be throwing knives at the salesmen (not shooting at them, because he doesn't like guns), and Hardison would be sabotaging the computers in the electric cars.

I love the scene in one of the episodes where Parker is poking Eliot and he's like, "Stop it," and she keeps doing it. Something about it made me think how interesting it would be if he had a biological younger sister, rather than just Parker!little-sister, and that's how Jasmine came to be. Garth was a given, seeing how the McCann brothers came as a paired set. Walter, I just took from the way his character was in the movie, but aged him up a few decades. I'm glad you liked my OCs!

Thank you for reading!


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